Preview Newsletter
AM ACC 12/21/2018
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(ACC Mentioned) What's the Healthiest Insulation?
Dec 20, 2018 | Treehugger
By Lloyd Alter
Insulation is a touchy subject in green building. Many designers just want the best R value and tightest seal, which you can get from plastic foams. -
(ACC Mentioned) Vitafoam Partners FG on Youth Employment
Dec 21, 2018 | New Telegraph Nigeria
By Chris Ugwu
Vitafoam Nigeria Plc has unfolded a new measure, involving one of its products’ application to create massive job opportunities to boost the Federal Government’s policy of youths’ self – employment. -
Appellate Court Partially Grants EPA Request To Narrow TSCA Risk Suit
Dec 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A federal appellate court has granted EPA's request to vacate and remand a provision in its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule for evaluating risks of existing chemicals that would allow industry submitters to face criminal penalties for providing incorrect information. -
‘Calamitous’ Harm Possible for EPA Chemical Program in Shutdown
Dec 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Shutting the government down could have particularly severe effects on the EPA’s oversight of chemicals in commerce and further delay the entry of new chemicals onto the market, two attorneys specializing in chemical policy told Bloomberg Environment. -
Two Lawmakers Question EPA on Asbestos After Reuters Report
Dec 20, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Lisa Girion
Two Democratic U.S. lawmakers have called on the Environmental Protection Agency to answer questions about asbestos exposure after Reuters reported that documents showed Johnson & Johnson knew for decades of the mineral’s presence in its popular baby powder. -
EPA to Consider Whole Pesticide Product Toxicity Testing (1)
Dec 21, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
The EPA is considering a request to change how it tests pesticides, a move toward looking at products’ entire formulation as sold rather than just the active ingredient chemical that kills pests. -
2019 Outlook: Courtroom Fights Over Future of Pesticides
Dec 21, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Three pesticides that dominated recent headlines will continue to make news in 2019, as attorneys wrangle over the future of the chemicals’ in court. -
UK to Launch New Chemicals Strategy
Dec 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The UK’s Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said it will generate a new chemicals strategy that aims to manage substances sustainably and address barriers to reuse and recycling. -
Trump Administration Takes Another Step Toward Oil Drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Dec 20, 2018 | Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
The Trump administration took another step toward allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by issuing a draft environmental impact statement outlining four development alternatives, one of which would set some modest limits... -
7 House Republicans Urge Interior to Slow ANWR Opening
Dec 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
A small bloc of House Republicans, most of whom are departing Congress, today urged outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke against rushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. -
East Coast States Join Seismic Testing Lawsuit
Dec 20, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Pamela King
Nine East Coast states are joining the legal battle against oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic, a precursor to offshore drilling. -
AG Interior Will Turn over Docs on Florida’s Offshore Drilling Exemption
Dec 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Danielle Muoio
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday that the Interior Department has begun turning over documents related to the federal agency’s decision to exempt Florida from its offshore drilling plan. -
Review of FERC's Pipeline Process 'Unwarranted' — Feds
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
The federal government this week asked the Supreme Court not to take up a case concerning eminent domain for natural gas pipelines. -
Pipeline Inspectors to Stay on Job if Government Shuts Down
Dec 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Pipeline inspections and investigations will continue if the government shuts down, but new regulations for hazardous material transportation could be delayed, according to the Department of Transportation. -
Death in the Oilfields: Fossil Fuel Boom Brings Mounting Risk of Death, Injuries
Dec 21, 2018 | Texas Tribune
By Jim Morris
Parker Waldridge had worked in the Oklahoma oilfields since he was 16 and acquired the traits that make a good driller: fortitude, intellect and a healthy respect for the power of a runaway gas well. -
Trump Admin Miscalculated Benefits of Oil Train Brakes
Dec 21, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
By Matthew Brown
The Trump administration miscalculated potential damage from train derailments when it canceled an Obama-era rule requiring the installation of more advanced brakes by railroads hauling explosive fuels, the Associated Press has found. -
Select Committee Proposal Solidifies to Progressive Dismay
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
House Democrats are hammering out a final proposal for a select committee on climate change, but it's one that likely won't please progressive activists pushing the "Green New Deal." -
Senate Bill Would Offer Grants for Clean Wood Stoves
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) introduced legislation this week that would create a $75 million EPA grant program to encourage people to switch out older wood stoves for newer, cleaner burning models. -
He Ran on Climate. Now He Wants to Make It a 2020 Issue
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
A California Democrat flipped a GOP-held House seat last month after running on a clean energy platform. Now he wants to flip thinking about climate change as a voting issue in the 2020 presidential election. -
What's in the Paris Rulebook?
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
In the end, after all the geopolitical drama and struggles over climate science, nations did their homework in Poland.
Industry and Association News
LCSA News
Chemical Management News
Energy News
Chemical Security News
Transportation and Infrastructure News
Environment News
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(ACC Mentioned) What's the Healthiest Insulation?
Dec 20, 2018 | Treehugger
By Lloyd Alter
Insulation is a touchy subject in green building. Many designers just want the best R value and tightest seal, which you can get from plastic foams. They say "solid petrochemicals are a lesser of two evils when compared to CO2" and deride my concerns as "an example of "Perfect is the enemy of good".
But some organizations have been looking beyond CO2 at the issues of health. A new report by Energy Efficiency for All (EEFA)—Making Affordable Multifamily Housing More Energy Efficient: A Guide to Healthier Upgrade Materials is a real eye-opener. It was developed by the Natural Resources Defense Councilin collaboration with The Healthy Building Network (HBN), Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, Three3, and the International Living Future Institute, to determine which are the healthiest. Why is this necessary?
") left top no-repeat rgb(249, 247, 245); text-shadow: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8) 2px 2px 0px; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;">Building materials matter to our health. So why do so many of the products commonly used to insulate and air seal our multifamily buildings contain chemicals that are hazardous? We believe that three primary factors are at work: a weak regulatory environment allowing the use of hazardous chemicals in products; misconceptions about chemicals in building products and their impacts; and the lack of disclosure and transparency about chemicals used in products.
The regulatory control of chemicals in the USA is particularly weak, with the attitude that they are safe until proven otherwise. An amazing 62,000 chemicals were grandfathered in when the Toxic Substances Control Act was passed 45 years ago and only 200 have been tested since. So according to the EPA many of the chemicals in the list above are perfectly fine. Some of them even have their own promotional organizations. When you are up against the American Chemistry Council, Formaldehyde Facts and this gem from theKitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, it is hard to know what to believe.
Toxic chemicals aren't necessarily safe if they are behind walls, either; "A 2009 Healthy Building Network analysis of fiberglass insulation emissions studies revealed that formaldehyde from binders readily migrated through drywall and air barriers."
Using a four-step methodology, NRDC and its partners ranked insulation products on the basis of health impacts. They also include relative costs.
Regular readers will probably not be surprised to see cork up at the top of the list, but unfortunately, it has the highest relative cost of any insulation.
What was really surprising to me was that fibreglass came next; I always thought it should be avoided. The industry replaced formaldehyde binders with acrylic binders a decade ago, but I still believed that the fibres were a health hazard. It also has a bad reputation because of really terrible installations.
I have been a fan of rock wool instead and once made the case that it was the greenest insulation, but it apparently still has formaldehyde. The Living Building Challenge gives it an exemption for exterior use on foundations because there are not a lot of options, particularly if you want to avoid foam.
Cellulose, which is hugely popular because of its low embodied energy, rates lower than fiberglass because of the large quantity of boric acid flame retardant, "a potential concern because of its associated developmental and reproductive hazards."
There are other insulations that have been excluded because of cost or limited availability, including foamed glass, mushrooms, polyester, Airkrete and sheep's wool. Given that the report is directed towards retrofits of multifamily housing, this probably makes sense. But it would be nice to know where they all sit on the table.
The focus on health in multifamily buildings makes sense, given the higher population density and as noted recently, the often crappy ventilation systems. But the lessons can be applied to any building, the most important being that health matters as much as R-Value. It's a wake-up call:
It is time for a discussion about the connections between people’s health and buildings. While the impacts of housing quality on health are well known to public health professionals, this understanding has only recently gotten traction in the energy-efficiency and building performance industry.
The tighter the building envelope, the more critical it becomes to eliminate these harmful chemicals. That's why it is so important that efficient buildings be healthy buildings. This document is a great place to start.
https://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/whats-healthiest-insulation.html
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(ACC Mentioned) Vitafoam Partners FG on Youth Employment
Dec 21, 2018 | New Telegraph Nigeria
By Chris Ugwu
Vitafoam Nigeria Plc has unfolded a new measure, involving one of its products’ application to create massive job opportunities to boost the Federal Government’s policy of youths’ self – employment. According to its Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Mr Taiwo Adeniyi, the company’s new job creation strategy, aimed at expanding the scope of the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) is consistent with the economic diversification programme of the Federal Government in order to grow the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other key indices of economic growth and development. Addressing the participants at a one day Entrepreneurship Seminar for Undergraduates with the Theme “Polyurethane Application for Small and Medium Enterprises” at the University of Lagos, Adeniyi explained that economic transformation and diversification must be rooted in the development of strong SMEs.
Adeniyi, who described polyurethane as materials such as woods, fibers, plastics, clothing, footwear and generally household and industrial products’ explained that the raw material could be manufactured as furniture parts, cooler, boxes, mattresses, garage doors, water heaters, fridges and a host of others. He said: “According to the Economic and Statistics Department, American Chemistry Council, the Polyurethane Industry operates in nearly 1000 locations in the United States, directly generating 28. 6 Billion Dollar output and 48,800 jobs.
The top end- use markets for polyurethane consumption are building and construction, transportation, furniture and bedding industry. “Our core objective of this seminar is how to create sustainable jobs for our youths as a support for the Federal Government’s policy of youths empowerment. Let people see why they do not need to line up and be seeking for employment. But, rather they can create jobs for themselves.
They can be Chief Executives as soon as they finished their schooling and start their own businesses and help to develop this economy. Vitafoam has strong capacity to provide the required support structure for SMEs in the polyurethane industry. He listed some of the challenges facing SMEs in Nigeria as funding, lack of technical support, difficulty in access to raw materials and relatively high stock holding. In his presentation, the guest speaker, who runs the largest Polyurethane Company in Brazil and also a Non-Executive Director of Vitafoam, Mr. Gerson Silva, spoke on “Discovery and Historical Progression of Polyurethane.” He stated that a wide range of products and services were derivable from polyurethane, hence, the economic benefits of this technology can only continue to grow.
https://www.newtelegraphng.com/2018/12/vitafoam-partners-fg-on-youth-employment/
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Appellate Court Partially Grants EPA Request To Narrow TSCA Risk Suit
Dec 20, 2018 | Inside EPA
By Dave Reynolds
A federal appellate court has granted EPA's request to vacate and remand a provision in its Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) rule for evaluating risks of existing chemicals that would allow industry submitters to face criminal penalties for providing incorrect information.
But in its Dec. 18 order, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected EPA's requests to remand two other provisions addressing the scope and quality of data industry must submit and instead agreed with environmentalists and labor unions that remand would deny their right to judicial review and referred the provisions to a merits panel.
The rule at issue in the case is part of a framework of measures for prioritizing and evaluating risks of existing chemicals, implementing a key provision in the law targeting for the first time substances that were in commerce when the original TSCA was first adopted in 1976, but which were largely grandfathered from regulation.
The case, Safer Chemicals Healthy Families et al. v. U.S. EPA et al., brought by groups including Safer Chemicals Healthy Families, the Natural Resources Defense Council and United Steelworkers, challenges EPA's claim that it has discretion to exclude certain conditions of use and their resulting exposures from review as inconsistent with the revised TSCA.
The issue is critical to the new law's implementation as it could determine what uses the agency will regulate if it finds that existing chemicals -- those in use when the law was first adopted in 1976 -- pose “unreasonable risk.”
Many states have said they will consider regulating uses the agency declines to address -- such as legacy uses and those uses already addressed by other agencies and EPA programs -- creating a patchwork that many industry groups oppose.
While the litigation was pending, EPA filed an Aug. 6 request seeking remand with vacatur of the risk evaluation rule's penalty provision, noting that the final rule expanded the provision to apply to submitters other than manufacturers. EPA also cited petitioners' arguments that the provision is unconstitutionally vague and could have a chilling effect on information submitted to EPA during public comments.
EPA also asked remand without vacatur of two other provisions of the risk evaluation rule pertaining to the scope and quality of data that companies must submit for manufacturer-requested reviews, signaling that it planned to consider revising those provisions.
EPA acknowledged in the request that petitioners' arguments in the suit prompted the agency to review, and subsequently identify, flaws in the provisions that govern when a submitter may face criminal penalties for providing incorrect information, and for ensuring that submitted information is relevant to the review and consistent with the scientific standards outlined in TSCA.
Data Provisions
On the two provisions relating to the scope and quality of data submitted for manufacturer-requested reviews, the agency noted that environmentalists have argued that the provisions' language suggests that chemical manufacturers who submit data may determine the scope and quality of information needed for review rather than the agency.
But while EPA appears to back some of the environmentalists' arguments relating to the narrow provisions on information gathering, the agency has broadly defended its discretion to limit the conditions of use that it will consider in reviews, a central issue in the litigation. EPA also argued that environmentalists lack standing to bring some of claims.
In a Sept. 17 response to EPA's request for remand, petitioners consented to the vacatur request but opposed remand without vacatur, arguing the move would deny advocates' right to judicial review and that remand was unnecessary to revisit the information gathering provisions, which the agency had not committed to doing anyway.
“EPA’s request, if granted, will effectively deny Petitioners any opportunity to seek judicial review of the manufacturer-discretion provisions, while leaving the provisions in place indefinitely,” petitioners said.
The court's order also granted an Aug. 9 request from the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to file an amicus curiae brief, which generally backs EPA's discretion to limit the scope of reviews and thereby limit animal testing.
PETA originally lodged its amicus brief as part of its Aug. 9 request. The group notes that TSCA directs EPA to reduce and replace animal testing in chemical reviews, and says that limiting the agency's discretion to exclude conditions of use from its risk evaluation would increase the number of animals needed for tests.
https://insideepa.com/daily-news/appellate-court-partially-grants-epa-request-narrow-tsca-risk-suit
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‘Calamitous’ Harm Possible for EPA Chemical Program in Shutdown
Dec 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Pat Rizzuto
Shutting the government down could have particularly severe effects on the EPA’s oversight of chemicals in commerce and further delay the entry of new chemicals onto the market, two attorneys specializing in chemical policy told Bloomberg Environment.
“If a shutdown were to occur—any shutdown of any length—would invite calamitous results,” said Lynn Bergeson, managing partner of Bergeson and Campbell, P.C.
The EPA’s chemicals office faces the most deadlines in its history in 2019 due to requirements under the 2016 Toxic Substances Control Act amendments.
“The longer the shutdown, the greater the damage to EPA institutionally and to the toxics program as a whole,” Bergeson said Dec. 18, as Congress and the White House were still negotiating a possible budget agreement.
The spending bill being debated in Congress would temporarily fund the federal government through Feb. 8. But President Donald Trump said Dec. 20 he wouldn’t sign a spending bill that didn’t include funding for a wall along the country’s border with Mexico.
Lingering Effects“Even a short shutdown is highly disruptive,” Bergeson said by email. “A week or so shutdown could take months from which to recover. The emotional setback this holiday season is especially cruel and our federal employees deserve better.”
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which oversees chemicals and pesticides, this year registered its lowest morale rating since the Partnership for Public Service—a nonprofit that studies the government workforce—started tracking it in 2012, according to the service’s 2018 survey.
“I think that morale is low across EPA,” said William Jordan, who served at the EPA between 1975 and 2016 and retired as the deputy director of the pesticide program.
New ChemicalsIf the shutdown is prolonged, the EPA would have to furlough staff, which would further prolong the manufacture and sale of new chemicals that already have had their statutorily mandated 90-day reviews delayed, said Robert Helminiak, vice president of legal and government relations for the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA).
The association represents small chemical manufacturers and divisions of large companies that make specialty chemicals. Not all specialty chemicals are new chemicals, but new compounds tend to be specially designed for narrow market applications, he said.
“The new chemicals review process can be expected to be uniquely impacted by any shut-down,” Bergeson said. “The complicating factor here is the ‘stop-start’ nature of any shut-down and the havoc it invites in an already tight 90-day time frame.”
The TSCA amendments direct the agency to decide within 90 days, with a one-time extension of 90 additional days, whether a new chemical would or might pose an unreasonable risk warranting some type of control before it could be manufactured.
Despite that requirement, it has still taken the EPA months—in some cases years—to decide whether a new chemical can be made.
—With assistance from Tiffany Stecker.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/calamitous-harm-possible-for-epa-chemical-program-in-shutdown
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Two Lawmakers Question EPA on Asbestos After Reuters Report
Dec 20, 2018 | Reuters (In The New York Times)
By Lisa Girion
Two Democratic U.S. lawmakers have called on the Environmental Protection Agency to answer questions about asbestos exposure after Reuters reported that documents showed Johnson & Johnson knew for decades of the mineral’s presence in its popular baby powder.
Whether asbestos in the talc supply in Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Powder caused cancer has been the subject of litigation for years.
The lawmakers, Senator Jeff Merkley and Representative Suzanne Bonamici, did not mention Johnson & Johnson by name but expressed "deep concern" about Friday’s Reuters report, according to a copy of their letter dated Dec. 19 and reviewed by Reuters.
Read the Reuters investigation https://reut.rs/2rAz2TO
J&J has disputed the Reuters report, calling it a "misrepresentation." The company says its talc is safe and has never contained asbestos, adding that decades of studies and regulatory assessments confirm the safety of its product.
Representatives for the EPA did not be respond to an email or a telephone call seeking comment on the congressional letter.
Asked about the lawmakers' letter, J&J spokesman Ernie Knewitz declined to comment but said the Reuters report was "one-sided, false and inflammatory."
According to the Reuters report, documents as well as deposition and trial testimony showed that from at least 1971 to the early 2000s the company's raw talc and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos.
Most internal J&J asbestos test reports Reuters reviewed did not find asbestos.
The company has defended its products in recent days with a series of full-page newspaper advertisements and a television interview with its chief executive. Shares of the company have fallen about 12.5 percent since the Reuters report on Friday.
In their letter, the two lawmakers asked the EPA how it was regulating potentially unsafe asbestos-containing products.
Merkley and Bonamici also asked the EPA to detail what steps it was taking to help prevent vulnerable populations such as pregnant women and infants from being exposed to products containing asbestos, including other products with talc, a mineral.
Although baby powder is subject to regulation under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, other talc products sold to consumers would be within the purview of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) and thus the responsibility of the EPA, they wrote in the letter.
Democratic U.S. Senator Edward Markey separately called on the FDA to investigate the findings in the Reuters report in a letter on Friday. The FDA could not immediately be reached for comment.
"Asbestos is a known carcinogen, and one for which there is no controlled use or safe level of exposure," Merkley and Bonamici wrote. "Fifty-five countries have already banned asbestos. Unfortunately, the United States still permits the use of asbestos."
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/12/20/us/20reuters-johnson-johnson-cancer-senate.html
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EPA to Consider Whole Pesticide Product Toxicity Testing (1)
Dec 21, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
The EPA is considering a request to change how it tests pesticides, a move toward looking at products’ entire formulation as sold rather than just the active ingredient chemical that kills pests.
The agency will publish a notice in the Dec. 21 Federal Register soliciting comment on the petition through March 21, 2019.
The Center for Food Safety petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to make the changes in July 2017. The organization asked that the EPA take into account all pesticide ingredients’ effects on the environment, consider the effects of mixtures that occur when different pesticides are combined, test inert ingredients for toxicity, and consider the impacts of whole pesticide formulations on endangered species.
“We’re pleased to see the agency take this important first step in regulating pesticides,” George Kimbrell, legal director for the Center for Food Safety, told Bloomberg Environment.
The EPA now only requires toxicity data on a pesticide’s active ingredient, which is the chemical with insect, weed, or germ-killing properties in a pesticide product. But other ingredients used in pesticides to stabilize formulations can also affect health and the environment.
Pesticide mixtures can cause “synergistic” effects in which two chemicals amplify the effects of the pesticide when mixed together.
The issue was raised in 2015 when the EPA discovered it overlooked a Dow Agrosciences patent application for its herbicide Enlist Duo in which the company claimed two weedkilling chemicals amplified each other’s effects. The EPA had not considered this in its review and subsequently canceled its own approval of the pesticide.
Attorneys in litigation alleging Bayer AG’s Roundup herbicide caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma in users also point to polyethoxylated tallow amine, a surfactant in the herbicide, as toxic to human cells. The arguments in the lawsuits, however, center on the main ingredient in Roundup, the chemical glyphosate.
The announcement comes as the EPA completes a separate legal settlement with the Center for Food Safety that will require three pesticide retailers to stop selling pesticides with two chemicals that harm pollinating insects.
(Adds quote from George Kimbrell in the fourth paragraph and information on legal settlement in the last paragraph.)
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/epa-to-consider-whole-pesticide-product-toxicity-testing-1
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2019 Outlook: Courtroom Fights Over Future of Pesticides
Dec 21, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Tiffany Stecker
Three pesticides that dominated recent headlines will continue to make news in 2019, as attorneys wrangle over the future of the chemicals’ in court.
Chlorpyrifos, dicamba, and glyphosate are decades-old chemicals which manufacturers have held fast to, because they are effective and relatively inexpensive.
Chlorpyrifos was first registered by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1965, and dicamba was approved two years later. Glyphosate, the youngest of the bunch, received EPA approval in 1974.
The pesticides are undergoing scrutiny for their effects on health and the environment. Chlorpyrifos, an insecticide linked to neurodevelopmental delays in children, could be banned from use if the EPA is forced to comply with a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit order to revoke all uses on food crops.
Glyphosate, the world’s most commonly used herbicide, was pegged a “probable” carcinogen by an international cancer research agency in 2015, spurring fierce backlash from the original manufacturer, Monsanto Co.
The company argued that an overwhelming number of regulatory agencies around the world have determined that it is not harmful at concentrations allowed under pesticide labels.
And dicamba, an herbicide reformulated to combat weeds that no longer die with glyphosate, is allegedly responsible for millions of acres of crop damage in farm country as it drifts to off-target fields.
Companies say these chemicals are necessary so that pests won’t evolve resistance against the remaining pesticides available for farmers.
“Fewer active ingredients will simply put more pressure on insect, weed, and plant disease pests to develop resistance,” John D. Conner Jr., an attorney with Crowell & Moring LLP in Washington, D.C., who works with pesticide manufacturers told Bloomberg Environment.
Glyphosate Will Cost Bayer MillionsBayer AG, which bought Monsanto this past summer, is facing more than 9,000 lawsuits in state, federal, and local courts alleging glyphosate in their Roundup weedkiller caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Six trials have been scheduled for 2019 and two for 2020, as the EPA is slated to re-approve the herbicide for use by the end of next year.
The first trial in the litigation forced Bayer to cough up $78.6 million in damages. A jury concluded in August that Monsanto should be held accountable for Dewayne “Lee” Johnson’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Johnson, a groundskeeper in the San Francisco Bay area, frequently used Roundup at work.
The next trial will begin Feb. 25, 2019, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California. Challenger Edwin Hardeman, a California man who began using Roundup in the 1980s to control poison oak and weeds around his home, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2015.
A decision in that case from Judge Vince Chhabria could direct the course for thousands of similar lawsuits. One other trial is scheduled in the same federal court where hundreds of similar challenges have been consolidated. Other trials have been scheduled in St. Louis city court, St. Louis county court, and the California Judicial Council Coordination Proceedings.
As the trials proceed, plaintiffs will have to reach an increasingly steep bar showing that glyphosate exposure caused an individual’s cancer, Holly Froum, a Bloomberg Intelligence legal analyst said during a Dec. 19 webinar.
“Just because it can cause cancer doesn’t mean it did,” Froum said. She expects Bayer to eventually pay between $5 billion and $10 billion to settle all of the cases.
Farmers Fight In Court Over DicambaGlyphosate won’t be the only legal headache for Bayer in 2019.
The company is also gearing up for multi-district litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri against farmers who say that Bayer’s dicamba herbicide, Xtendimax, was sold in 2017 and 2018 without the necessary studies to ensure that it wouldn’t damage neighboring crops.
More than 100 soybean growers, peach farmers, and others also challenged Bayer on antitrust claims, saying the drifting herbicide forces growers to buy the company’s genetically modified seeds that grow into soybeans and cotton that aren’t harmed by dicamba.
The company took the old dicamba molecule and tinkered with it so that it didn’t evaporate quickly in heat. But over the last two summers, millions of acres of soybeans and other crops were damaged from drifting dicamba, raising questions on whether the new products from Monsanto, BASF SE, and DowDuPont Inc. were any better than the earlier versions.
Bayer maintains that the damage was caused by unauthorized use of the old versions of dicamba.
The EPA conditionally re-approved the pesticide Oct. 31 for two years with additional restrictions aimed at reducing off-target movement of dicamba. A separate lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit from environmental groups argues that the EPA never should have registered Monsanto’s product. Judges have yet to issue their opinion in that case.
Trump Administration Defends ChlorpyrifosThe federal government also is expected to continue defending its position to reverse a proposed ban on chlorpyrifos, an insecticide developed by DowDupont but now made by many different companies.
The Obama administration was on course to cancel all agriculturally approved uses of the pesticide, but former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed that plan in March 2017, punting a decision to 2021.
A split 2-1 Ninth Circuit panel decision in August ordered the EPA to cancel all registrations and revoke all tolerances—the acceptable amount of the pesticide on food—of chlorpyrifos. The Trump administration then asked the full Ninth Circuit to review the decision.
The court could deny the request but make minor changes to the August order, Patti Goldman, an attorney with Earthjustice in Seattle who is representing environmental groups in the litigation, told Bloomberg Environment. It’s rare, but possible, that the court will grant the petitions for an “en banc” hearing.
If the petitions are denied, the administration could take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t think there’s the basis for the Supreme Court to take the case,” Goldman said. “But they may ask.”
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/2019-outlook-courtroom-fights-over-future-of-pesticides-1
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UK to Launch New Chemicals Strategy
Dec 21, 2018 | Chemical Watch
By Luke Buxton
The commitment was included in the government’s new Resources and Waste Strategy announced in December. The policy falls in line with the UK’s 25-year environment plan, published in January.
Leaving the EU on 29 March next year is "an opportunity to refresh and renew" environmental policy, and "show domestic and international leadership", UK environment secretary Michael Gove said in the paper.
The chemicals strategy, Defra says, will "look to address" the presence of harmful chemicals in products and set minimum ecodesign standards. It will also consider how it addresses identification and tracking of chemicals in products across supply chains to support a circular economy.
Additionally it would establish the government’s approach to working internationally to "strengthen" standardisation of methods that assess chemicals safety. This will support the mutual acceptance of data to identify and share information on emerging concerns and new approaches to risk assessment, it says.
The strategy will also "shape" the post-2020 framework under the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (Saicm) to target tackling chemicals throughout the product lifecycle and ensure actions are based on strong scientific evidence.
This will also mean action to address issues associated with the presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in products, including by:
establishing a work programme to effectively implement regulations for both legacy and future products containing these pollutants;
continuing to fund targeted research on POPs and other substances of concern aimed at increasing the knowledge base;
encouraging innovation on chemical identification and extraction technologies through working with stakeholders and industry; and
continuing to engage internationally to align rules on the classification of hazardous chemicals with hazardous waste rules.
Consultation
The UK says it will launch a call for evidence in 2019, but did not provide a firmer date. The aim of the call will be to inform the chemicals strategy and help the government to define substances of concern. Under REACH, SVHCs are identified but these "are not the only substances that can create barriers for recycling", the strategy says.
The consultation will also assist the UK in finding and monitoring chemicals in products across global supply chains and to consider different rules for substances in primary and secondary materials.
Additionally, it says, feedback will facilitate better communication between recyclers and designers so that hazardous components are designed for easier dismantling, and destroyed to increase safe recycling operations.
And, it adds, the government will consult in the summer on further ways to encourage hazardous waste producers to implement the waste hierarchy.
The development of clear guidance on the Best Overall Environmental Option (Boeo) for problematic wastes, it says, would promote the adoption of waste management practices "that make sure hazardous chemicals in wastes do not pose a continuing risk to human health and the environment and don’t end up contaminating secondary raw material streams".
NGO reaction
CHEM Trust executive director Michael Warhurst said it is crucial that the strategy "takes as its starting point a commitment to follow all EU decisions in REACH and related regulations, to make sure the UK maintains these world-leading standards".
Ideally, Mr Warhurst added, this would include the UK continuing to participate in REACH. The focus of policies on waste and chemicals should be on reducing the use of hazardous chemical at source, and on ensuring that such chemicals are not re-circulated through the circular economy, he said.
"We also welcome the recognition that extended producer responsibility could be part of the solution for dealing with chemicals in products – such as furniture and building products, where chemicals are often present – which have since been banned, for example brominated flame retardants."
https://chemicalwatch.com/72961/uk-to-launch-new-chemicals-strategy
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Trump Administration Takes Another Step Toward Oil Drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Dec 20, 2018 | Washington Post
By Steven Mufson
The Trump administration took another step toward allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by issuing a draft environmental impact statement outlining four development alternatives, one of which would set some modest limits to protect caribou that use the area as a critical summer calving ground.
Environmental groups roundly criticized the report, which they said had been rushed in an effort to get exploration started during President Trump’s first term.
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management said on Thursday that it still intends to hold an oil and gas lease sale in 2019 that would open up exploration of the refuge’s coastal plain, or approximately 1.6 million acres of the 19.3 million acre ANWR.
BLM said that the first lease sale would offer no fewer than 400,000 acres of “high-potential” land for bids.
The refuge — home to polar bears, wolves, migratory birds and the porcupine caribou herd — has long been closed off to oil and gas exploration despite interest in the petroleum industry. Climate change has made the area more delicate as melting ice has driven threatened polar bears to spend more time in dens along the refuge’s coastal plain.
However, a controversial provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 passed one year ago Thursday provided for opening up ANWR’s coastal plain to drilling and ordered the administration to hold at least two lease sales within seven years.
“An energy-dominant America starts with an energy-dominant Alaska,” outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said in a statement. And Alaska’s Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan applauded the move toward drilling.
One of the four development alternatives in the 392-page draft would attempt to protect the caribou’s summer habitat by putting aside 708,600 acres while still allowing oil and gas leases on more than 1 million acres, the draft EIS said.
Some of the alternative sets of regulations would limit some summer activity to avoid disturbing calving caribou season. But the BLM draft study says that those limitations can be waived without laying out what criteria would be used for doing so.
“If you’re going to have leasing at all, which I don’t think we should be doing, the idea of closing it during the most sensitive times is good,” said Tim Fullman, a wildlife ecologist at The Wilderness Society. “The question is will you actually stick to that or have they written in loopholes so that they can evade that if they really wanted to.”
The BLM said it would hold public meetings in D.C. and the Alaskan cities of Anchorage, Arctic Village, Fairbanks, Kaktovik, Fort Yukon, Venetie, Utqiaġvik. It set a 45-day comment period ending Feb. 11. A final EIS would follow, then a lease sale.
Environmental groups were unhappy with the process.
“There’s no precedent for anything done this quickly for an environmental review of this scale,” said Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League. He said that “this is really a rubber-stamp exercise rather than an effort to mitigate the impact to wildlife on the coastal plain.”
He said that the location of the public hearings — all but one in Alaska — was unfair to people living in the Lower 48 states. “These are public lands that belong to all Americans,” he said, adding that polls show widespread opposition to drilling in the refuge.
The Wilderness Society issued a report saying that the administration’s estimates of oil in the refuge “was based on outdated information and overly optimistic assumptions about how much oil exists in the region, the price of such oil and the speed with which it could be developed and taken to market.”
The society’s report notes that the December 2017 sale on the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska attracted bids on less than one percent of the 10.3 million acres offered.
A source familiar with Alaska lease sales but who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that for now, oil companies weighing bids include ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, ASRC, Oil Search, Armstrong and Repsol.
Over the past 41 years, giant oil companies have produced 13 billion barrels of crude oil from Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay and any new production on the state’s North Slope could be hooked up to existing pipeline infrastructure.
The urgency of discovering and producing more oil in the region to fill the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has eased somewhat by increased drilling and new discoveries on state and unprotected federal lands west of ANWR. Those developments will bolster the oil flowing through the pipeline, which was carrying only a quarter of its capacity. Volumes of oil going through the line have increased to 530,000 barrels a day this year, up from 508,000 barrels a day in 2015.
More volume lies ahead. ConocoPhillips has repeatedly increased its estimates of a 2016 discovery of the Willow field in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. It said in a recent presentation to investors that the field could hold as much as 1.1 billion barrels of oil and could produce 100,000 barrels a day.
This winter BP is also conducting a large seismic survey of Prudhoe Bay looking for new opportunities.
The Interior Department draft environmental impact study comes after an earlier dispute between the Bureau of Land Management and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which said that seismic surveys used to pinpoint potential oil reservoirs would inflict damage on the refuge.
Earlier this month, the publication Mother Jones reported that an internal memo written in September by the head of the state’s Fish and Wildlife Service noted that seismic surveys involving vibrations of the earth from equipment on trucks posed a danger to the polar bears. The author of the memo later told Mother Jones in an email that “the application has changed, and as a result, our analyses and findings have changed.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-takes-another-step-toward-oil-drilling-in-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge/2018/12/20/5fb93f40-0469-11e9-b5df-5d3874f1ac36_story.html?utm_term=.96f645f1686f
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7 House Republicans Urge Interior to Slow ANWR Opening
Dec 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro - Whiteboard
By Anthony Adragna
A small bloc of House Republicans, most of whom are departing Congress, today urged outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke against rushing to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development.
"The tax bill did not waive existing environmental laws that apply to the Coastal Plain, and BLM must provide for the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitats, to maintain the biological integrity, diversity, and environmental health of the Refuge," the lawmakers, led by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), wrote in a letter. "Any regulatory process requires thoughtful input and consideration of public comments; unfortunately, the current process is not adequate, and does not live up to this standard."
The letter comes as BLM announced it would issue a draft environmental impact statement next week, a key step toward opening ANWR to drilling.
Also signing the letter were Republican Reps. Dave Reichert (Wash.), Ryan Costello (Pa.), Frank LoBiondo(N.J.), Mark Sanford (S.C.), John J. Faso (N.Y.) and Dan Donovan (N.Y.).
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/whiteboard
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East Coast States Join Seismic Testing Lawsuit
Dec 20, 2018 | E&E News PM
By Pamela King
Nine East Coast states are joining the legal battle against oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic, a precursor to offshore drilling.
Oceana and other environmental groups last week sued NOAA Fisheries for approving a set of permits allowing five operators to "incidentally, but not intentionally, harass marine mammals" in the companies' search for fossil fuels in the Atlantic Ocean (Greenwire, Dec. 11).
"The impact of the harassment that [NOAA Fisheries] has authorized will be devastating," Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh (D) said in a news conference today at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
Chief legal officers for the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina and Virginia also joined the motion to intervene in the environmental groups' lawsuit. The challenge was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.
Several South Carolina municipalities and a small business coalition filed their own challenge of the seismic permits in the same court.
Some of the state attorneys general who signed on to today's motion had previously pledged to challenge the Trump administration's proposal this year to open most of the U.S. outer continental shelf to oil and gas leasing. A promise by outgoing Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to exempt Florida from the plan raised the ire of officials — both Democrat and Republican — in other states with robust coastal economies.
An interim draft of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's five-year offshore plan is expected soon.
"Today's announcement sends a clear message to President Trump that coastal states are united against harmful seismic airgun blasting for offshore drilling," Diane Hoskins, Oceana campaign director, said in a statement.
"These attorneys general are standing up for their states, their way of life and their coastal economies," she said.
NOAA Fisheries does not comment on pending litigation.
https://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2018/12/20/stories/1060110297
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AG Interior Will Turn over Docs on Florida’s Offshore Drilling Exemption
Dec 20, 2018 | PoliticoPro
By Danielle Muoio
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said Thursday that the Interior Department has begun turning over documents related to the federal agency’s decision to exempt Florida from its offshore drilling plan.
The Trump administration is expected to announce its five-year plan for offshore drilling in January, a proposal that could open up parts of the Atlantic coast to oil and gas leasing. Shortly after the Interior announced its offshore drilling proposal, then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke exempted Florida from the drilling plan, sparking outcry from New Jersey officials.
New Jersey has opposed offshore drilling, arguing that an oil spill would, among other things, hurt the state’s $44 billion coastal tourism industry. New York is also opposed to the notion, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo suggesting earlier this year that he would lead a citizens flotilla to interfere with drilling operations.
“If you have actual evidence that justifies treating Florida differently than New Jersey, then turn it over,” Grewal said at a Thursday press conference. “But if you don’t, then exempt New Jersey from offshore drilling as well.”
In October, Grewal filed a lawsuit over Interior’s failure to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for internal documents of meetings or conversations that took place between the offices of the Interior Department and Florida Gov. Rick Scott, ahead of the exemption announcement.
Grewal said Thursday that Interior has begun turning over documents and, so far, there’s no justification for giving Florida an exemption, but not New Jersey.
A POLITICO investigation found that Scott and Zinke were in regular contact for several days leading up to the Jan. 9 announcement that Florida was “off the table” for offshore drilling.
New Jersey has also joined a lawsuit with nine other states seeking to block seismic testing for oil and gas reserves in the Atlantic, a precursor to oil exploration. The suit was initially filed by environmental groups who say the testing — which involves using sonic blasts to find oil and gas — can harm wildlife.
This report first appeared on POLITICO Pro New Jersey on Dec. 20, 2018.
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/energy/article/2018/12/politico-pro-new-jersey-ag-says-interior-will-turn-over-docs-on-floridas-offshore-drilling-exemption-1048862
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Review of FERC's Pipeline Process 'Unwarranted' — Feds
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Energywire
By Pamela King
The federal government this week asked the Supreme Court not to take up a case concerning eminent domain for natural gas pipelines.
Landowners affected by the Mountain Valley pipeline this fall petitioned the court to examine the constitutionality of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's process for approving gas transport projects (Energywire, Oct. 26). Petitioners had previously challenged FERC's process in federal district court, but a judge dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal.
The lower courts correctly "conclude that the [Natural Gas Act] required petitioners to assert their claims before FERC and then in a court of appeals, not by bringing a suit against FERC in a district court," federal attorneys wrote in a brief filed Wednesday.
"No other court that has addressed the question has reached a contrary conclusion," they wrote. "Further review is unwarranted."
Developers of the Mountain Valley pipeline also filed a brief to oppose Supreme Court review of the case. Though the lawsuit stemmed from construction of the 300-mile project through West Virginia and Virginia, petitioners say the questions are broader than deciding whether that particular pipeline should be built.
Federal respondents say the 4th Circuit properly applied a framework established in the 1994 Supreme Court case Thunder Basin Coal Co. v. Reich to determine that the courts of appeal hold sole legal jurisdiction over challenges to FERC orders.
Petitioners contend that the 4th Circuit ruling requires opponents of a FERC order to participate in a circular process that violates the principle of separation of powers.
"Going through that 'review process with FERC' would mean asking FERC whether it — an agency — thinks Congress violated the Constitution," attorneys for the landowner petitioners wrote in their Oct. 23 request for certiorari.
Lawyers for the government wrote in their brief that because the petitioners did not properly raise their separation of powers challenge in the lower courts, the Supreme Court could not consider their argument.
The court has not yet decided whether it will hear the case.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/21/stories/1060110339
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Pipeline Inspectors to Stay on Job if Government Shuts Down
Dec 20, 2018 | BNA Daily Environment Report
By Sylvia Carignan
Pipeline inspections and investigations will continue if the government shuts down, but new regulations for hazardous material transportation could be delayed, according to the Department of Transportation.
More than half of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration’s staff would be furloughed in a government shutdown, according to the Department of Transportation’s contingency plan, released to Bloomberg Government Dec. 20.
The shutdown could delay work on multiple regulations the agency is drafting, including enhancing the safety of hazardous liquid and gas pipelines, and requirements for underground storage facilities for natural gas.
Staff who would continue work are responsible for investigating pipeline incidents and accidents as well as hazardous material shippers.
President Donald Trump said Dec. 20 he wouldn’t sign a spending bill that didn’t include funding for a wall along the country’s border with Mexico, according to reporting by Bloomberg Government. The bill would temporarily fund the federal government through Feb. 8.
The pipeline safety agency employs about 560 people, about 280 of whom are necessary for the protection of life and safety. In the event of a shutdown, the agency would suspend its rulemaking efforts as well as strategic planning and research.
—With assistance from Shaun Courtney.
https://news.bloombergenvironment.com/environment-and-energy/pipeline-inspectors-to-stay-on-job-if-government-shuts-down
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Death in the Oilfields: Fossil Fuel Boom Brings Mounting Risk of Death, Injuries
Dec 21, 2018 | Texas Tribune
By Jim Morris
Parker Waldridge had worked in the Oklahoma oilfields since he was 16 and acquired the traits that make a good driller: fortitude, intellect and a healthy respect for the power of a runaway gas well.
And so, when Waldridge’s wife, Dianna, heard there had been an accident on a rig he was working near Quinton, in the southeastern corner of the state, last Jan. 22, she tried to stay calm. Parker, an independent contractor hired as a well site consultant, was obsessed with safety and had not once expressed fear about a job during their 34-year marriage, she told herself.
Still, on the four-hour drive to Quinton from their home in Crescent, north of Oklahoma City, dread began to creep in. Dianna had learned before leaving that Parker was among five men missing after an explosion on Patterson Rig 219, operated by Houston-based Patterson-UTI. At a church in Quinton, she sat with her four grown daughters, a son-in-law and the other workers’ families, awaiting confirmation of what everyone there suspected: the men weren’t coming back. They would have to be identified through dental records.
Drilling is an inherently dangerous undertaking, with a fatality rate nearly five times that of all industries in the United States combined in 2014, the last year such rates on oil and gas extraction were published by the government. Production pressures — and the temptation to cut corners — intensify during boom times, as America is experiencing now due to a rush of fossil-fuel exports.
The work of coaxing oil and gas from thousands of feet underground is performed in biting cold and breathtaking heat by stoics like Parker Waldridge, who burned to death at the age of 60 in a driller’s cabin, known as a doghouse, atop the floor of Rig 219.
“It is a macho world,” said Frank Parker, a safety consultant in Magnolia, north of Houston, who has studied the industry and its workers for more than 50 years. “They get up in the morning and eat nails for breakfast. We need those people to do that kind of work. We’ve just got to find a way not to kill them.”
From 2008 through 2017, 1,566 workers died from injuries in the oil-and-gas drilling industry and related fields, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s almost exactly the number of U.S. troops who were killed in Afghanistan during the same period.
From 2008 through Oct. 25 of this year, the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited companies in the extraction industry for 10,873 violations, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of OSHA data found. Sixty-four percent of the violations were classified by the agency as “serious,” meaning inspectors found hazards likely to result in “death or serious physical harm.” Another 3 percent were classified as “repeated,” meaning the company previously had been cited for the hazard, or “willful,” indicating “purposeful disregard” for the law or “plain indifference to employee safety.”
During that period, OSHA investigated 552 accidents that resulted in the death of at least one worker. Among them were 11 accidents involving Patterson-UTI; OSHA found violations in 10.
Initial penalties in the 552 accidents averaged $16,813, but later were reduced by, on average, 30 percent. (OSHA often cuts fines in exchange for quick settlements and hazard abatement). Some violations are still being contested by employers. Others were dropped by OSHA after negotiations with companies.
The number of workers exposed to death, injury and illness in the upstream portion of the oil and gas industry — exploration and production — is growing, especially in the frenetic Permian Basin of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico. At the beginning of December, according to figures from oilfield services firm Baker Hughes, the basin accounted for more than half of the nation’s operating drilling rigs — 489 in all.
In Texas, oil and gas extraction firms employ 2,400 more people than they did a year ago. But the real job growth has come in support activities: As of October, companies employed 170,600 derrick operators, rotary drill operators and other workers — 50,000 more positions than at the start of the decade. This puts more workers in the path of bone-crushing machinery, explosive gases and cancer-causing chemicals.
Asked how OSHA is responding, a Labor Department spokesman wrote in an email that enforcement crackdowns, centered on the oil and gas industry, are under way in five regions of the country. (The one covering Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico officially lapsed in October but OSHA inspectors are operating as if it were still in effect, the spokesman wrote.)
Nonetheless, the upstream industry is exempt from key OSHA rules that apply to other industries. It does not have to comply, for example, with the process safety management standard, which requires that refineries, chemical plants and other high-hazard operations adopt procedures to prevent fires, explosions and chemical leaks.
OSHA decided not to include upstream in the original standard in 1992 because it had proposed a rule specifically aimed at drilling. That rule was killed by the White House, whose occupant at the time, George H.W. Bush, had run his own oil company in Texas before entering politics. Unnerved by a catastrophic blast at a Texas fertilizer plant in 2013, then-President Barack Obama ordered OSHA to begin the process of updating the rule. The agency sought, among other things, to bring upstream into the fold.
The response was chilly. The International Association of Drilling Contractors said the removal of the exemption would do “little to improve safety,” impose “unnecessary regulatory burdens and ultimately … result in Americans being put out of work.” The exemption stayed.
David Michaels, who led OSHA at the time, said he met regularly with upstream leaders and they were not universally opposed to more regulation. Still, trade groups such as the American Petroleum Institute argued for the status quo, pointing to the industry’s relatively low injury rate. Michaels didn’t buy it.
“They have a low injury rate because they often don’t report their injuries,” he said in a recent interview. “They have a very high fatality rate, so it’s simply not possible they have a low injury rate.”
In a written statement, institute spokesman Reid Porter said, “API members strictly adhere to OSHA recordable injury reporting and other regulatory reporting requirements.” He wrote that injury rates within the upstream industry are decreasing and that the process safety management standard “may not apply well to upstream activities.” The Labor Department spokesman did not respond to a question on the standard.
The numbers, whatever they are, don’t convey the warlike brutality inflicted in the oilfields when something goes wrong. On Aug. 31, 2017, 38-year-old Juan Vicente De La Rosa was working on a platform above a wellhead in Midland County, Texas, when a cable snapped, freeing heavy blocks that struck De La Rosa and killed him almost instantly.
A photograph of the accident scene released by the Midland County Sheriff’s Office under a public-records request shows De La Rosa’s body on the ground, face up. His eyes are shut, his mouth agape. His blue shirt is smeared with what appears to be oil or grease. His left foot is bent outward at a 90-degree angle. His right lower pant leg is shredded.
“I tried CPR but could not get him going,” a co-worker told sheriff’s investigators. “He had a real slow pulse and then none.”
De La Rosa worked for a well-servicing company called Big Lake Services LLC. Big Lake was hired by the owner and operator of the well, Pioneer Natural Resources USA, a major player on the Texas side of the Permian. A lawsuit filed against both firms by the mothers of De La Rosa’s children alleges the Pioneer representative at the site — the “company man,” in industry parlance — acknowledged to investigators “he had been told that the severed cable was in need of repair.”
OSHA cited Big Lake for a single violation and proposed a $12,805 fine, which the company is contesting. It did not cite Pioneer. Pioneer and Big Lake representatives did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit; both denied the plaintiffs’ allegations in court filings.‘This could have been prevented’
Traumatic injuries like those that killed Parker Waldridge and Juan De La Rosa aren’t the only existential hazards upstream workers face. Toxic gases — notably hydrogen sulfide, a component of crude oil that carries a distinctive rotten-egg odor — can be just as lethal.
It was hydrogen sulfide, also known as H2S, that took the life of Gregory Claxton, an Iraq War veteran and the father of a 3-year-old boy, in Montague County, Texas, on Feb. 14, 2015. Claxton, 29, was a crude hauler for Twin Eagle Transport LLC of Houston. Twin Eagle was a contractor for EOG Resources, a large exploration and production company also based in Houston.
Claxton moved oil by truck from a battery of storage tanks at EOG's Cooper B Unit, near the unincorporated town of Forestburg, to a pipeline in Wichita Falls some 70 miles away. It was part of his job to dip a bottle on a rope, known as a thief, into the tanks to collect a sample so the oil's consistency, or specific gravity, could be ascertained. (The lighter the oil, the more it is worth). He also was to measure the oil's depth and temperature to calculate the volume in the tank.
On the morning of his death, Claxton climbed onto a catwalk above a tank holding crude from Well 1H. Opening the hatch, he was hit with a wave of H2S. He died so suddenly that his body was found upright, as if frozen in place. After performing an autopsy, a pathologist with the Dallas County medical examiner’s office listed the cause of death as “Toxic effects of hydrogen sulfide.”
Gregory’s parents, Randall and Shellye Claxton of Nocona have settled a lawsuit against Twin Eagle but are still fighting EOG in court. EOG posted no H2S warning signs at the Cooper B Unit, they claim, and Gregory was given no respiratory protection. Had EOG alerted Twin Eagle to the presence of the deadly gas, Shellye believes, Twin Eagle — lacking the proper safety equipment — would have turned down the job.
“He was a Marine,” she said of her son. “He went to Iraq twice. He was willing to lay down his life for his country, and I just don’t want him to have died in vain. I know these accidents happen, but this could have been prevented.”
An EOG spokesman declined to comment; in a court filing, the company denied the allegations in the pending lawsuit. Twin Eagle did not respond to requests for comment but, in a court document, also denied the allegations before reaching a settlement with the Claxtons.
Randall, who was hauling crude for Twin Eagle from a different location the day Gregory died, left the oil business after the accident. Now a long-distance truck driver, he said there is a culture of denial on H2S that extends to the Texas Railroad Commission — which, despite its name, regulates oil and gas drilling in the state.
“I’ve got a lot of friends who work in the oilfield,” Randall said. “Every one of them told me there is no H2S in Montague County. They’ve been lied to.”
In an email to the Center for Public Integrity, Railroad Commission spokeswoman Ramona Nye wrote that agency inspectors conducted tests at the Cooper B tank battery on Feb. 19, 2015 — five days after the accident that killed Gregory Claxton. Pulling air into a test tube from a catwalk above the tank Claxton was gauging, the inspectors found “no H2S levels above 2 parts per million,” she wrote, and tests on April 10 of that year picked up no evidence of the gas. Nye added that “there are no H2S-designated fields in Montague County” — that is, no fields with H2S levels of 100 ppm or above. Such designations by the state require operators to provide worker training, post warning signs and implement safety and security measures.
Frank Parker, the safety consultant, said that by the time the Railroad Commission did its initial testing on Feb. 19, the hydrogen sulfide levels just beyond the hatch of the tank would have dropped precipitously. “It’s going to disperse within a few minutes” after the hatch is opened, he said.
OSHA says it takes at least 700 ppm of the gas to cause “rapid unconsciousness [and] ‘knockdown’ or immediate collapse within 1 to 2 breaths,” as apparently happened with Claxton.
“There’s a great inconsistency between a two-part-per-million hydrogen sulfide reading and somebody dying from acute overexposure,” Parker said. “It does not look to me like the Railroad Commission is trying to find out what really happened.”
In an interview at Shellye and Randall Claxton’s house in November, James York, a family friend and longtime oilfield worker now preparing wells for production in the Permian, called Nye’s statement “bull----.” York speaks from experience. He recalled working at a tank battery just north of Nocona around 2000 when H2S “pegged my monitor out,” meaning the concentration was at least 100 ppm. He fled.
Why would a regulatory agency insist there was no problem in Montague County?
“They don’t want to document it, because once they document it these companies will have to put procedures in place,” York said. “That will cost them money they don’t want to spend.”
Asked to comment, Nye wrote: "Any operator found to be in violation of RRC rules [governing H2S] faces enforcement action by the Commission." During the 2018 fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31, the commission took 19 such actions statewide. Ten resulted in collective fines of $47,610; the other nine are pending or were dismissed.
But if a field isn’t designated “sour” — imbued with potentially dangerous levels of the gas — there are no H2S rules to violate.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, documented nine worker deaths nationwide during tank gauging between 2010 and 2014. These were likely due, NIOSH said, not to H2S but to inhalation of hydrocarbon gases or vapors or to asphyxiation by breathing oxygen-depleted air.
The research agency issued alerts in March 2015 and February 2016. The warnings led to an American Petroleum Institute standard urging — but not requiring — operators to find automated ways to measure and sample crude in tanks, so workers wouldn’t have to open the hatches. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management adopted a rule along these lines in 2016 for companies drilling on federal lands.
The NIOSH alerts came too late for Gregory Claxton. They might not have helped even if they’d come sooner. And other insidious threats lurk in the oilfields, in part because of the upstream industry’s regulatory exceptionalism. The industry, for example, is exempt from a 1987 OSHA rule designed to strictly limit exposure to benzene, a highly volatile, carcinogenic component of crude oil. Instead, it is subject to a far more lenient limit, dating back to OSHA’s creation in 1971.
Benzene is often released during “flowback” operations at well sites in which hydraulic-fracturing fluids and volatile hydrocarbons are collected at the surface and sent to tanks or pits. The OSHA exposure limit for benzene in industries such as oil refining is one part per million averaged over an eight-hour workday. The short-term limit is 5 ppm over any 15-minute period. For upstream companies, the eight-hour ceiling is 10 ppm and there is no short-term limit at all.
In a 2014 paper, NIOSH researchers reported finding benzene spikes above 200 ppm during sampling of flowback operations in Colorado and Wyoming. That’s enough to cause symptoms such as dizziness, headaches, tremors, confusion, rapid or irregular heartbeat and unconsciousness.
Paper co-author Max Kiefer, now retired, said the spikes suggest the flowback process is not well-controlled and that higher full-shift exposures may be occurring, even though the limited study did not find benzene levels above 1 ppm over a 12-hour workday. If the more restrictive benzene rule applied to the upstream industry, Kiefer said, “It’s likely the industry would have taken action to reduce exposures.” In a statement, API’s Porter wrote that companies had “taken steps since [the NIOSH] findings to mitigate this risk.”
A number of upstream leaders belong to the National Service, Transmission, Exploration & Production Safety Network, a government-industry collaboration that covers 20 oil- and gas-producing states. The network helps spread the word about oilfield hazards such as lung-damaging silica dust, which is generated by the large-scale use of sand to hold open fissures in underground rock formations during fracking.
In his statement to the Center, the Labor Department spokesman wrote that “OSHA is routinely in touch with employers in the oil and gas industry to improve health and safety.” He pointed to a safety conference in Houston, co-sponsored by the department, that drew about 1,200 people in early December.
In Shellye Claxton’s view, however, there is no substitute for the strict policing of companies bent on making as much money as quickly as possible.
“There are little things they can do” to enhance safety, she said, “but they don’t want to spend the extra dollars.”
‘Rogue corporate entity’
At 6 a.m. on Jan. 22, Parker Waldridge reported for work at well 1H-9 on the Pryor Trust 0718 gas lease in Pittsburg County, Okla. As is typical, a tangle of companies was involved in the drilling of the L-shaped well, which had reached 13,435 feet. The lease holder was Red Mountain Energy LLC; the well operator, Red Mountain Operating LLC. The latter hired Patterson-UTI as the drilling contractor. Waldridge, an independent contractor, was working for a project-management firm called Crescent Consulting LLC.
Within hours of Waldridge’s arrival on site, he and four others would be dead, burned beyond recognition in the 1H-9 doghouse. It was the deadliest drilling accident in the United States since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, killing 11 workers.
A fact sheet issued by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which is investigating the Pryor Trust blowout, presents the following timeline:
At 6:48 p.m. on Jan. 21, the Patterson-UTI crew began removing drill pipe from the wellbore — an operation known as “tripping” — so the drill bit could be changed. A heavy fluid known as drilling mud was pumped into the well to fill the void created by the removal of the pipe. Shortly after midnight, the crew pumped a weighted cap known as a “pill” — consisting of a claylike mineral called barite and meant to keep gas from invading the well and creating a blowout risk — to about 7,000 feet, near the bend in the “L.”
The tripping operation resumed, and by 6:10 a.m. on the 22nd as Waldridge’s shift began, the crew had removed the drill bit and other components from the bottom of the hole.
Unbeknownst to the workers, gas had, in fact, entered the well during tripping. The well was equipped with a blowout preventer, but key parts of that device — blocks of steel known as “blind rams” — did not fully close. A towering, hissing fire erupted at 8:36 a.m. and was not extinguished until 4 p.m.
After an investigation, OSHA cited Patterson-UTI in July for six violations and proposed fines totaling $73,909; Patterson is contesting the citations. The agency cited Crescent Consulting for four violations and proposed fines totaling $36,586. It, too, is contesting. No citations were issued to either Red Mountain Energy or Red Mountain Operating.
Meanwhile, Parker Waldridge’s wife, Dianna, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Patterson-UTI, Red Mountain Energy, Red Mountain Operating, Crescent Consulting and mud-supplier National Oilwell Varco LP. The lawsuit calls Patterson a “rogue corporate entity” and accuses it of “a cascade of errors and multiple departures from safe drilling practices,” including failing to take countermeasures against “underbalanced” tripping, when pressure in the hole is greater than it is on the surface. This can allow gas to migrate into the vertical section of the well.
The lawsuit cites deposition testimony from Patterson-UTI employees and internal company documents showing that the day crew on Jan. 22 inherited “a ticking time bomb.” Documents show, for example, that the machine that operated the balky blind rams on the well’s blowout preventer “was improperly maintained and in a state of severe disrepair,” the lawsuit says. It adds that an email warning to this effect — with a skull-and-crossbones graphic — was sent at least two days before the blowout to the Patterson-UTI rig manager and superintendent. The former testified that he never saw the email but agreed it “should have been taken seriously,” and the latter “did not remember if he looked at it.”
Patterson-UTI is one of the biggest drilling operators in the country, accounting for 15 percent of the active rigs in the U.S. as of late November. Its corporate culture was laid bare three years ago, when it settled a discrimination case with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $14.5 million.
A lawsuit brought against Patterson-UTI by the EEOC on behalf of some 1,000 employees alleged the company “engaged in a nationwide pattern or practice of discrimination based on race and national origin on its drilling rigs,” assigning minority workers to the lowest-level jobs and disciplining, demoting or firing them disproportionately. Depositions associated with that lawsuit paint a grim picture of the work environment for people of color; one Native American driller, who kept a diary, testified that a supervisor regularly called him a “f------ Indian” and asked if he was "drunk" or "high."
The Waldridge lawsuit accuses the company of having “the second worst worker fatality rate among its peers in the industry,” accounting for the deaths of at least 50 workers since 1999.
In a written statement, Patterson-UTI said that “while we have no intention of litigating this in the press, it is important to note that Red Mountain was the lease holder and operator of the well, which was drilled under its direction, supervision and control. Red Mountain was also responsible for the well’s design and drilling program.” The company said it disagrees with OSHA’s findings and the “gross mischaracterizations” in the lawsuit and has “dramatically reduced workplace incident rates and significantly increased overall employee safety” in recent years.
Of the EEOC case, the company said, “Rather than pursuing costly litigation to dispute past claims, Patterson-UTI chose to work with the EEOC to institute additional human resources best practices and to enter into a no-fault settlement …. The Company is committed to providing a work environment for all employees that is inclusive, respectful and supportive.”
A spokeswoman for Red Mountain Energy issued the following statement on behalf of company president Tony Say: “Safe, responsible operations are the top priority at every Red Mountain Energy well. Our deepest sympathies go out to those affected by this tragedy. We are confident the legal process will exonerate our company.”
A Crescent Consulting official did not respond to requests for comment, though the company denied responsibility for the accident in court pleadings. A spokesman for National Oilwell Varco wrote in an email that the firm “denies all liability concerning the tragedy that occurred [on] Patterson Rig #219.”
During a recent interview in Oklahoma City, Dianna Waldridge and one of her lawyers, Michael Lyons of Dallas, spoke at length about the Pryor Trust accident and its aftermath. Lyons said there was “a climate and a culture” of carelessness at Patterson-UTI, which made “terrible mistakes” on Rig 219.
“It all starts in a boardroom many miles away,” he said. “I don’t blame the men who, unfortunately, died in this tragedy or were out there working. It’s not their fault they were improperly trained and improperly supervised.”
Dianna, who still works cattle and grows wheat on the 320-acre ranch she and her husband bought a quarter-century ago, struggled to maintain her composure during the interview.
“I’ve lost the man that I love, that I wanted to grow old with,” she said, her voice halting. “Not having him will affect me forever.”
The anguish caused by the Pryor Trust blowout extends beyond the dead workers’ families. In a September deposition for the Waldridge case, Sheriff Timothy Turner of Haskell County, Oklahoma — which adjoins Pittsburg County and is home to many oilfield workers — testified that the accident is a frequent topic of conversation among residents of southeastern Oklahoma.
“Every time there’s an incident with a Patterson rig now, it’s ‘Patterson killed those guys.’ … They believe that the person who oversaw that rig should be in jail,” Turner said.
“He murdered five people. That’s their belief.”
Joe Yerardi, Rachel Leven and Jamie Smith Hopkins of the Center for Public Integritycontributed to this article. The Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/12/21/death-oilfields-fossil-fuel-boom-brings-mounting-risks/
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Trump Admin Miscalculated Benefits of Oil Train Brakes
Dec 21, 2018 | AP (In E&E Energywire)
By Matthew Brown
The Trump administration miscalculated potential damage from train derailments when it canceled an Obama-era rule requiring the installation of more advanced brakes by railroads hauling explosive fuels, the Associated Press has found.
A government analysis used by the administration to justify the cancellation omitted up to $117 million in estimated future damage that could be avoided by using electronic brakes. The error could stoke renewed criticism from supporters of the rule who say the analysis was biased.
Department of Transportation officials acknowledged the mistake after it was discovered by the AP during a review of federal documents, but said it does not change their decision not to install the brakes.
Safety advocates, transportation union leaders and Democratic lawmakers oppose the administration's decision to kill the brake rule, which was included in a package of rail safety measures enacted in 2015 under President Obama following dozens of accidents by trains hauling oil and ethanol in the U.S. and Canada.
The deadliest happened in Canada in 2013, when an unattended train carrying crude oil rolled down an incline, came off the tracks in the town of Lac-Mégantic and exploded into a massive ball of fire, killing 47 people and obliterating much of the Quebec community's downtown. There have been other fiery crashes and fuel spills in Alabama, Oregon, Montana, Virginia, West Virginia, North Dakota and Illinois.
After the brake rule was enacted, lobbyists for the railroad and oil industries pushed to cancel it, citing the high cost of installing so-called electronic pneumatic brakes and questioning their effectiveness.
Unlike other systems where brakes are applied sequentially along the length of a train, electronic pneumatic brakes, or ECP, work on all cars simultaneously. That can reduce the distance and time a train needs to stop, and cause fewer cars to derail.
"These ECP brakes are very important for oil trains," said Steven Ditmeyer, a rail safety expert and former senior official at the Federal Railroad Administration. "It makes a great deal of sense: All the brakes get applied immediately, and there would be fewer cars in the pileup."
Under Obama, the Transportation Department determined the brakes would cost up to $664 million over 20 years and save between $470 million and $1.1 billion from accidents that would be avoided.
The Trump administration reduced the range of benefits to between $131 million and $374 million. Transportation Department economists said in their analysis that the change was prompted in part by a reduction in oil train traffic in recent years, which meant there would be fewer derailments.
The transport of crude on U.S. railroads peaked in 2014, when 540,000 tank cars shipped. That fell to about 210,000 carloads last year, most of it from the Bakken oil patch of North Dakota and Montana, according to industry figures.
But in making their calculations, the economists left out the most common type of derailments in which spilled and burning fuel causes property damage but no mass casualties, the AP found. Equipping fuel trains with electronic brakes would reduce damage from those derailments by an estimated $48 million to $117 million, according to DOT estimates that were left out of the administration's final tally.
Including the omitted benefits reduces the net cost of the requirement to as low as $63 million under one scenario laid out by the agency.
Transportation spokesman Bobby Fraser said the omission was unintentional and would not have changed September's decision to cancel the electronic brake requirement. Under the administration's analysis, the cost of the brakes would have outweighed the benefits even when considering estimated damage from derailments that were left out of the original findings.
However, excluding those potential damages means the difference between costs and benefits would have been much narrower.
A 2015 act of Congress mandated that DOT repeal the braking requirement if an analysis showed more costs than benefits. Fraser said a correction to the agency's findings will be published to the Federal Register, but the repeal will stand.
https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2018/12/21/stories/1060110305
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Select Committee Proposal Solidifies to Progressive Dismay
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Nick Sobczyk
House Democrats are hammering out a final proposal for a select committee on climate change, but it's one that likely won't please progressive activists pushing the "Green New Deal."
Incoming Rules Chairman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said yesterday he's working with leadership on a formal proposal for the committee, which will be included in the rules package, one of the first items the House will vote on in the new Congress. He added that he expects to have something together "in the next couple of days."
McGovern suggested the language won't be nearly as prescriptive as the draft resolution floated by Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the Sunrise Movement. It will have no legislative or subpoena power, nor will it be specifically tasked with crafting a "Green New Deal" bill. What, exactly, the committee works on will be up to its members, McGovern said.
"I support the Green New Deal, and I certainly want to do everything I can to advance it," McGovern told reporters. "But I'm not going to pre-judge what the select committee is going to do."
But in a continuation of a feud that's been brewing for weeks, the Sunrise Movement last night issued a rebuke of that vision of the select committee.
"Without a mandate to create a plan and a requirement that its members don't take fossil fuel money, we are deeply concerned that this committee will be just another of the many committees we've seen failing our generation our entire lives," Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, said in a statement.
The Democratic establishment has been in conflict for weeks with the progressive Sunrise Movement and Ocasio-Cortez over the structure of the select committee in the next Congress.
Committee chairmen, especially incoming Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), generally want the select panel not to be formed or to have little real power, while Ocasio-Cortez has been pushing for the select panel to be an exclusive forum to write a sweeping "Green New Deal" bill.
What the select committee actually looks like in the next Congress is being dictated largely by incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was talking about bringing back the Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming weeks before Ocasio-Cortez took up the idea.
Then-Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) chaired that panel the last time Democrats controlled the House, and Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) is poised to lead it this time around (Greenwire, Dec. 20).
John Bowman, senior director of federal affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, cheered the news. "As a longtime environmental champion, few are better suited to help shine a bright light on the threats Americans face from the climate crisis and advance the solutions we urgently need," he said.
Sunrise, too, was hopeful Castor and Pelosi would be able to deliver on their vision for the committee.
"As Pelosi and Castor share more about the committee's mandate and goals, we hope that they will use this opportunity to make a real plan to transform our economy in line with what the science and justice demand, and create millions of good jobs in the process," Prakash said.
But progressives were especially miffed by news this week that the panel would likely not have subpoena power (Climatewire, Dec. 20).
"Our ultimate end goal isn't a Select Committee. Our goal is to treat Climate Change like the serious, existential threat it is by drafting an ambitious solution on the scale necessary — a Green New Deal — to get it done. A weak committee misses the point and endangers people," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Wednesday.
At the same time, even some members who have backed Ocasio-Cortez's proposal don't see that distinction as a big deal. McGovern, for instance, voiced his support last week.
The important thing will be to get a select committee up and running within "existing structures" to help spotlight the issue, McGovern said. If the select panel is willing to work with committees of jurisdiction, its lack of subpoena power likely won't be an issue.
"The bottom line is that there are ways to deal with that," McGovern said. "They can work with committees of jurisdiction if they want to have somebody subpoenaed and join them in joint hearings."
But not all current lawmakers have resigned themselves to leadership's vision for the select committee.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of the early backers of Ocasio-Cortez's proposal, said it would be "in the political self-interest" of Pallone and the committee chairs to support a strong select committee with subpoena and legislative powers.
Khanna noted that Pallone's committee has a massive chunk of jurisdiction over other big-ticket issues, such as health care, and suggested a select panel could only help Democrats address climate change.
"Where we really need to move forward is on the turf warfare," Khanna told reporters yesterday. "I think we've got to get the committees to realize they are winners by empowering a new committee, not losers, and stop the Washington mindset of hanging on to turf."
Pallone initially voiced his opposition to the select committee but has repeatedly refused questions about it over the last week.
"I'm not talking about the select committee," Pallone said yesterday. "I don't want to."
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/12/21/stories/1060110343
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Senate Bill Would Offer Grants for Clean Wood Stoves
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Daily
By Sean Reilly
Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) introduced legislation this week that would create a $75 million EPA grant program to encourage people to switch out older wood stoves for newer, cleaner burning models.
The "Wood Heaters Emissions Reduction Act," S. 3779, would make money available to homeowners to replace stoves and other wood-fired heating appliances with versions that meet EPA's latest emissions standards.
The proposed initiative is based on the popular Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) program, which has furnished tens of millions of dollars in recent years to get higher-polluting, diesel-fueled vehicles off the road.
"At a time when our country is looking for ways to grow our economy, reduce health care costs and clean up the environment, this legislation stands as an opportunity we should capitalize on," Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a news release.
In Alaska, where stoves are widely used, "older inefficient appliances for wood heat can last a really long time, but newer options are better for both our health and the environment," Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in the same release, which includes an endorsement from American Lung Association President Harold Wimmer.
By pumping $75 million annually into the market, the bill could also be seen as incentive for industry to meet the EPA standards. As a final May 2020 compliance deadline approaches, some companies have been angling for more time.
In September, Carper had unsuccessfully sought to create the grant program with an amendment to S. 1857, which would push back the 2020 deadline until May 2023 (E&E Daily, Sept. 18).
After winning EPW approval, however, S. 1857 appears likely to die in the Senate. EPA is also exploring the possibility of administratively allowing a delay.
Stoves and other wood-burning appliances can be significant sources of dangerous particulate pollution. An estimated 11.5 million homes, the bulk of them in rural areas, use wood as a heating source, according to the release.
Under S. 3779, introduced Wednesday, the grant program would initially be authorized for five years. EPA would route the money through state, regional and tribal agencies. At least 4 percent would have to go to Indian tribes for functions that include training instructors and technicians, as well as addressing maintenance costs resulting from the installation of new wood stoves and other appliances, according to the legislation.
https://www.eenews.net/eedaily/2018/12/21/stories/1060110349
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He Ran on Climate. Now He Wants to Make It a 2020 Issue
Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Anne C. Mulkern
A California Democrat flipped a GOP-held House seat last month after running on a clean energy platform. Now he wants to flip thinking about climate change as a voting issue in the 2020 presidential election.
Rep.-elect Mike Levin, 40, won the seat of retiring Rep. Darrell Issa, a nine-term GOP House member. He beat Republican candidate Diane Harkey 56.4 percent to 43.6 percent, the widest spread of the seven GOP-held seats in California that Democrats flipped in the November elections.
Levin's an environmental attorney who also ran a clean technology trade group. He picked the title "Clean Energy Advocate" for his ballot description.
As they take control of the House in January, Democrats shouldn't shy away from seeking action on global warming, Levin said. They can set parameters for the 2020 elections and let potential candidates know "that we do expect them to take bold and aggressive action to get us back on a course toward global leadership as it pertains to climate change," he said.
"That's something that I think we'll be holding all of the presidential candidates to account for," Levin said.
His election represents a big change for California's 49th District, which stretches along the coast from Del Mar in north San Diego County to Dana Point in south Orange County. It includes a large Marine Corps base and several neighborhoods with median home prices close to or topping $1 million.
During the last part of his tenure, Issa said he accepted climate change but opposed actions to address it that he saw as costly. He criticized President Obama's "Green Jobs Initiative," a bid to fund investments in the clean energy sector and create 5 million jobs. After narrowly winning re-election in 2016, Issa joined the House Climate Solutions Caucus.
Shortly after launching his bid for the office, Levin confronted Issa about his views on climate at a town hall meeting, holding up the book "Climate Change for Beginners." (He also mailed it to the congressman.) Levin asked why Issa supported President Trump's agenda "to gut the EPA, to gut basic science." He also joined protests outside Issa's local office urging him to retire.
Here's what he told E&E News in a recent interview:
Why did you believe running as "Clean Energy Advocate" would appeal to voters?
My background for the last decade-plus has been in clean energy and environmental protection. A lot of the work that we've done in California is potentially a national model for what is possible in the United States.
I ultimately campaigned on climate change and the environment because one, it was my background, and two, I think it was the right thing to do.
There was an article that was written by the Washington Examiner that said I was gambling by campaigning on climate change. I think just the opposite is true: We're gambling if we don't talk about climate change.
How so?
All you have to do is look at any of the recent reports [such as the fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration or the most recent U.N. International Panel on Climate Change report].
If you read even the summaries of those and the impact that global climate change will have here to our economy, to our environment, then not acknowledging the scientific consensus and taking affirmative steps to reduce our emissions footprint is a gamble that we cannot afford.
What sort of feedback did you hear from voters about your emphasis on clean energy and climate? The district is changing demographically but still has many conservatives.
It has been and continues to be a coastal district. The overwhelming feedback has been that we need to protect the quality of our air and water, and our beaches, and our oceans.
You said in a recent email that to reduce carbon emissions, "we must consider several ideas and not be afraid of bold action." Can you give me an example of potential bold actions?
We do need to create a new select committee on climate change that can both re-educate the public on the dangers posed by climate change, as well as do stakeholder engagement with a wide variety of important organizations and industry partners in the clean energy industry.
Then ultimately we'll draft policy. ... It will be a "Green New Deal." The details are the key: what that will look like, how quickly we can transition, what type of jobs we're creating and who will benefit economically? My hope is we'll have a just transition from fossil fuel use to renewables as quickly as possible.
What is your strategy on how you're going to get any of this accomplished over the next two years, with a GOP-controlled Senate and White House?
We've got to take the long view. Obviously we're not going to get a "Green New Deal" with Donald Trump in the White House. What we can do is try to piece together as many elements, sort of a down payment on the "Green New Deal" over the next two years, try to work with our friends across the aisle to whatever extent possible, but also plant a stake in the ground for all those running for president in 2020.
Do you see anything you can get accomplished in the next two years on the climate front?
There are proposals like trying to support the Paris climate accord, trying to have a resolution in support. Hopefully there are those in the Senate who can get behind [that].
I also have seen the new bill from the Citizens' Climate Lobby that's got Republican and Democratic co-sponsors, that has a carbon fee and dividend. I look forward to exploring that.
The fossil fuel industry, which opposes many of these measures, is very powerful. You're in a competitive district and could face a tough re-election campaign in two years. How do you plan to counteract this?
If you look at our race, we received overwhelming support from the environmental community that outweighed significantly any support from the fossil fuel industry that my opponent may have received. I have pledged not to take any fossil fuel money, and I'll stick to that pledge. I think most of my California colleagues are in the same boat.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/21/stories/1060110331
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Dec 21, 2018 | E&E Climatewire
By Jean Chemnick
In the end, after all the geopolitical drama and struggles over climate science, nations did their homework in Poland.
After two weeks of negotiations in the coal mining town of Katowice, nearly 14,000 delegates from 197 countries wrote the rules for how the 2015 Paris Agreement will work beginning in 2020.
It was a big task: Nations had to settle how countries would communicate, renew and explain their emissions and finance pledges, and participate in a collective review of the results on five-year cycles.
The sausage making wasn't always pretty.
"I trust that whenever you found dissatisfaction in one part of the text, it was balanced with satisfaction in another," Polish Conference of the Parties President Michal Kurtyka told parties in last Saturday night's closing plenary half an hour before he brought the gavel down on a decision that included the Paris rulebook.
Different parties expressed different levels of satisfaction with the overall package.
In particular, vulnerable countries said they felt the recent U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showing the urgency of quick action on warming got short shrift. The COP decision, though, did ask parties to consider the report's findings when offering new nationally determined contributions, or NDCs, by 2020 for 2030.
But Fijian climate ambassador Luke Daunivalu told E&E News that the rules of the road for Paris were as much a part of the island's ambitious agenda as the language on the scientific report.
"We need high ambition in the rules that operationalize the Paris Agreement," he said, listing "how the rules are structured, the reporting, the scope, adaptation, mitigation and finance" as priorities for vulnerable countries.
"They're all connected," he said.
Here's how the Paris rulebook came down on a few key issues.A single transparency framework
One of the most important Paris rulebook priorities for U.S. delegations under both Presidents Obama and Trump has been the adoption of a common set of IPCC-approved rules and procedures for accounting for and communicating commitments. This includes a role for technical and peer review.
Because Paris relies on peer pressure, the ability to accurately assess other countries' progress is key to building global trust and encouraging countries to strengthen their commitments, experts say. It's also a prerequisite for countries to partner on international emissions trading systems.
"The transparency guidelines are a centerpiece of the rulebook and crucial to the integrity of the Paris regime," Todd Stern, special envoy for climate change under Obama who led the U.S. delegation in Paris, told E&E News.
But the Paris Agreement acknowledged that some developing nations lack the experts, resources and data to adequately monitor and assess their emissions. It promised them "flexibility."
Since Paris, major developing countries led by China have argued that some flexibility should also be afforded to them, despite vast bureaucracies that their critics say are capable of performing those tasks. The United States, the European Union and others had feared that the "firewall" between historically rich and poor country responsibilities — which was demolished in Paris — could be reconstructed in the rulebook.
So even as the United States prepared to leave Paris, State Department negotiator Andrew Rakestraw spent the first two years of the Trump presidency co-chairing a working group with a Chinese counterpart aimed at delivering a single set of transparency rules.
It worked.
Early in the second week of the Katowice talks, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change, told reporters that he was comfortable with "uniform standards" for transparency — provided the Global North helped build capacity.
The final rulebook requires countries to use the same transparency procedures set by the U.N. body starting in 2024, the latest date by which their first biennial report would be due.
It also lays out specific ways in which developing countries can take advantage of flexibility and lets them "self-determine" whether they qualify. But countries must explain what flexibility they need and why, and how and when they anticipate being able to join the common framework. They'll be able to receive aid with capacity building.
"Having a common framework for transparency means China, India, Japan, Brazil, the U.S., the [European Union] and other major emitters will all start aligning on the same standard for reporting," said Han Chen, a climate advocate focused on Asia for the Natural Resources Defense Council. She called the Katowice language "a step forward."
The idea came from negotiator workshops run by French nongovernmental organization IDDRI earlier this year. Longtime U.S. career diplomat and climate negotiator Sue Biniaz led those workshops, combining negotiator ideas and her own in a summary paper.
A separate but related section of the rulebook mandates that parties use IPCC guidelines to provide emissions inventories every other year, and specifies what sectors and gases they must report.
Parties to Paris must admit international technical experts into their countries at least twice a decade to assess whether they are meeting their targets. They also have to submit to questioning by other experts and participating countries.Finance section gets mixed reviews
Before Katowice, countries led by the African Group demanded that rich donors provide information in advance about climate finance. That information would enable them to plan and make better use of aid, they said, including in preparing and meeting their national pledges.
Rich countries demurred, saying their budgeting and appropriations processes wouldn't allow them to give guarantees on aid.
But the rulebook's wording requires developed countries to report climate finance information biennially, including their public commitments "as available."
While developing countries viewed this as a qualified step forward, they were angered by the inclusion of rules inviting rich countries to count loans, loan guarantees and other non-grant-based commitments toward their overall finance.
"We wanted to see it much stronger, but sadly we have gone backward," said Harjeet Singh, who is based in India for ActionAid.
Climate finance is key to many poor countries meeting their Paris commitments, he noted. Current pledges to Paris promise to hold warming to less than 3 degrees Celsius, a dangerous level but still an improvement on the current global emissions trajectory.
"My biggest worry is that if this money isn't going to be real, we are even going to breach the 3-degree target," Singh said.Taking stock of progress
The IPCC report warned that the world must not warm more than 1.5 C — the aspirational goal of Paris — if it is to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The 2015 deal mandates that the world take stock of its progress toward its temperature goals every five years.
The global stocktake will officially begin in 2023. This year's Talanoa Dialogue, an activity meant to build empathy and spur greater ambition, was effectively a trial run.
The rulebook calls the process "crucial for enhancing the collective ambition of action and support towards achieving the purpose and long-term goals of the Paris Agreement."
"The [global stocktake] forces a collective reckoning among countries with where we are and where we need to be," said Elliot Diringer, who authored a summary of the rulebook. "And then, on that basis, parties are supposed to come back with revised NDCs that up their ambition."
The rulebook sets the parameters for that review. It also provides a role for taking into account the now-unavoidable harm done to poor populations as a result of climate change.
https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/12/21/stories/1060110329
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